Obama asserted that “an assault on women’s rights” is underway across the country, with bills introduced in more than 40 states to limit or ban abortion or restrict access to birth control or other services.

“The fact is, after decades of progress, there’s still those who want to turn back the clock to policies more suited to the 1950s than the 21st century,” he said. “And they’ve been involved in an orchestrated and historic effort to roll back basic rights when it comes to women’s health.”

President Obama gave a speech this morning at the 2013 Planned Parenthood Gala, becoming the first US President to address the group and prompting the usual unison chorus of shrieking and freaking from right wing media and blogs. The full speech is viewable above, and here’s the roll call of right wing reactions:

Fairly Sure I'm Still Obdicutre: #193 ElCapitanAmerica I don't get what you mean by 'naturally', nor why it's an important distinction. You seem to be wildly conflating two very different arguments-- your'e saying that the late-term abortion is wrong because you consider the fetus ...

Today in an article for right wing blog redstate.com, RNC chairman Reince Priebus demonstrated how serious the Republican Party is about this “rebranding” thing, by asking if President Obama and the Democratic Party support infanticide. Yes, he really did.

In an article published Wednesday on the conservative website RedState, Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus blasted Democrats for supporting Planned Parenthood, while floating the damning suggestion that the likes of President Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) support infanticide.

“The President, the Senate Majority Leader, the House Democratic Leader, and the Chair of the Democratic National Committee (in whose home state this hearing occurred) made funding Planned Parenthood an issue in the 2012 campaign,” Priebus wrote. “They should now all be held to account for that outspoken support. If the media won’t, then voters must ask the pressing questions: Do these Democrats also believe a newborn has no rights? Do they also endorse infanticide?”

This is damage control, folks — a sop thrown to the religious right, who are getting very angry with the Republican Party and their talk of “rebranding.” The absurdly hateful lie that President Obama supports infanticide has been bouncing around the right wing echo chamber for years, impervious to refutation, and Priebus is very calculatedly playing to that lovely group of people who are willing and eager to believe it.

On the day after Thanksgiving, a couple of women’s health centers in Florida offered a $10 discount on a clinic visit — leading to a freak-out by anti-abortion nuts, who seem to think that because the clinics are affiliated with Planned Parenthood, this can only mean one thing: the evil Planned Parenthood is selling discounted abortions.

A Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in souther Florida is offering a black Friday discount — including $10 off a visit to the abortion center today.

Planned Parenthood of South Florida and the Treasure Coast offered the special, saying, “Visit our West Palm Beach or Kendall Health Center for special after Thanksgiving savings on Friday, November 23rd.”

Even if you are pro-choice, the inappropriateness and tastelessness of such a “discount” has to disturb you. And if anything, it should renew calls for defunding the organization. If PP wants to act like a commercial concern by taking part in Black Friday “sales,” it doesn’t need federal money to prop it up. It can survive on its own in the marketplace by retailing abortion and other health-related services just like any other business.

It shouldn’t need to be pointed out again, but just to emphasize how stupidly deceptive this attack is, Planned Parenthood clinics provide a wide range of women’s health services, not just abortion — and in fact, abortions account for only about 3% of what PP health centers do:

ThorzdadHere in Indiana, Indiana Right to Life is already firing-up its supporters in the legislature to have another go at de-funding Planned Parenthood here. Their tactic this time is a claim that PP clinics are not following federal or state ...

The meeting of religious fanatics and social conservative lunatics known as the Values Voter Summit gets under way today in its usual caveman fashion, as Republican congressman Tim Huelskamp calls Planned Parenthood “racist baby killers”, compares women’s reproductive rights to slavery, and repeats the usual right wing lies about Obamacare funding abortions.

WASHINGTON — A Republican member of Congress equated Planned Parenthood to “slavery forces” and called it a “racist organization” that was “created with the sole purpose of killing children that look like mine.”

Rep. Tim Huelskamp, a congressman from Kansas who made the comments at the 2012 Values Voter Summit this morning, is staunchly anti-abortion rights and said he has adopted four children “each of them either black, Hispanic, native American.”

“Besides slavery, abortion is the other darkest stain on our nation’s character,” Huelskamp told the crowd. “And this president is looking for every way possible to make abortion more available and more frequent, and he wants you to pay for it — even if you disagree with it. Welcome to another provision of Obamacare.

“Like the pro-slavery forces who invaded Kansas, the pro-abortion forces in Washington and elsewhere want us to believe that abortion is not murder — that being born is worse than death, that the unborn baby is property, not a person. We’ve heard that before — 150 years ago,” Huelskamp said, in an apparent reference to the Civil War and slavery.

Patricia KaydenSo let me get this straight. Republicans are trying their best to stop Blacks from exercising their rights to vote in several states. They're even trying to keep Obama's name off the ballot in at least one state. A Republican ...

A great many Americans no longer believe in the separation of Church and State, and indeed deny it is a principle found in the Constitution. Yet the wording of the First Amendment is quite clear, and its importance to the founders is underlined by its being first. Certainly it was clear to Thomas Jefferson, who wrote, “I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”

That’s why it’s alarming to see so many politicians proposing to tear down that wall. It’s most evident in the eagerness of states to permit the teaching of Creationism (in the guise of Intelligent Design) in public schools, despite the ruling of a Pennsylvania U. S. District Court that “the overwhelming evidence at trial established that ID is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory.”

The other high-profile test of separation of Church and State comes in the attempt to legislate birth control, abortion and other matters pertaining to birth. We now have a likely Republican ticket which would ban all funds for Planned Parenthood, outlaw abortion even in cases of rape and incest, and allow employers to deny women access to cancer screenings and birth control. The likely vice presidential candidate, Paul Ryan, would go even farther. He is co-sponsor of a bill before the house that would criminalize in-vitro fertilization.

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute—where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote—where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference—and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish—where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source—where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials—and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

….snip…

That is the kind of America in which I believe. And it represents the kind of Presidency in which I believe—a great office that must neither be humbled by making it the instrument of any one religious group nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding its occupancy from the members of any one religious group. I believe in a President whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.
[Link: www.beliefnet.com…]

The employee asked the activist, “And have you guys — you know, ‘cause we’re required to discuss all of the, you know, a patient’s options — is adoption something that you were interested in considering?” [53:45]

After the activist claimed she used a test designed to identify the sex of a fetus early in a pregnancy, the employee responded, “I’m also a social worker and not a medical provider, so, you know, so from, you know, my role here, that isn’t something I’ve ever heard of.” [40:10]

The employee asked the activist, “And have you decided that you — you know, have you definitely decided that you would like to terminate your pregnancy?” [38:40]

The activist asked whether Planned Parenthood had an OB/GYN it would “specifically … recommend” who “would be understanding of my situation.” The employee responded, “I really — no, I don’t really know of an OB/GYN prenatal doctor who — I can tell you that they do prenatal care. I can tell you that they, you know, that they would be able to do these tests for you. I can’t really say that there’s going to be someone in particular who is going to be necessarily understanding. Most OB/GYN doctors, hopefully, you know, are understanding that it’s a woman’s choice to decide if she’s interested in adoption, if she’s interested in prenatal care, if she’s interested in terminating. And whatever somebody’s decision is for having an abortion is really her choice.” [49:30]

They’ve learned quite a bit from the tactics of Andrew Breitbart and James O’Keefe; most importantly, that the initial releases of their creepy undercover videos are covered much more widely than their inevitable debunking. Bottom feeder politics, go for the throat, ethics be damned — that’s Andrew Breitbart’s legacy of dishonesty.

The far right religious fanatics of “Live Action” are pushing yet another “hidden camera” hit job on Planned Parenthood today, a hit job so obvious and inept that Planned Parenthood caught on to Live Action’s sneaky activities more than a month ago.

Lila Rose, Live Action’s leader who is terrified of sluts, told The Daily Caller that this is just a tiny thread in a giant fetus sweater that she’s about to unravel.

First of all, the statistics and studies indicate that we are adding to the growing problem across the world of sex-selective targeting of unborn girls for abortion. We are going to be demonstrating - starting with this video from Texas - that the abortion industry in the United States is aiding and abetting this horrific problem.

Sounds pretty legit, right? Except it appears that Rose performed a complicated and risky fact-selective abortion in making that statement — it’s pure, steaming bullshit.

Statistics do not indicate that the US has a problem with sex-selective abortions, nor do they indicate an increasing gender discrepancy in the American birth rate. In fact, according to the Centers for Disease Control, the sex ratio — the number of baby boys born per 1,000 baby girls — has actually been decreasing slightly but steadily over the last 30 years. In 1983, 1,052 boys were born for every 1,000 girls born in the US; in 2009, 1,048 boys were born for every 1,000 girls. This is only indicative of a “growing problem” if by “growing problem,” Rose means “growing anti-abortion rights talking point.”

Further, so few abortions in the US occur after the 20th week that even if every single one of them were the result of sex-selection, only 1.5% of pregnancy terminations would occur at a time when sex selection was even possible. Additionally, 77% of Americans surveyed think that sex selective abortion is wrong — they’re hardly clamoring to abort in the 23rd week because they want a Jr instead of an -ette.

And finally, as Planned Parenthood pointed out in its statement following the release of this video, even if sex-selective abortion were a problem in the US, interfering with women’s access to safe, legal abortion isn’t going to fix anything — leading health organizations “do not believe that curtailing access to abortion services is a legitimate means of addressing sex selection, and are clear that gender bias can only be resolved by addressing the underlying conditions that lead to it.”

If these fanatical anti-choice loons are so sure they have God on their side, and their cause is so righteous, why do they lie so often?

Of course, all the right wing blogs jumped right into line and started helping promote Live Action’s scam, because it’s what they do. One example of many: Ed Morrissey at Hot Air, who does that wingnut inverted projection thing again, and dubs this the “real war on women.”

Nemesis6They lie so much because what they really want is to lie with mankind as with womankind, and womankind as with mankind if you will... but the closet makes realizing that hard, so it manifests itself like this instead. It's ...

Lila Rose is a soldier in the religious right’s war to drag women back to the Dark Ages, and in this clip from Right Wing Watch she makes it clear that she believes she’s in a battle with Satan himself.

His Nibs. Working through Planned Parenthood.

We’re facing many challenges, I know with the election coming up with our president, we need a new president. We need to take out Planned Parenthood, we need to stop funding them, we need to make sure they are no longer operating in our communities.

[…]

The whole lie that we don’t need Christ, or that there’s no hope for us, there’s no hope for the girl that’s struggling, there’s no hope for the trafficking victim, there’s no hope for the unborn child, there’s no hope for our country, it’s a lie. I believe it’s a direct lie, it’s a lie of Satan himself, because he wants to discourage us and because he doesn’t want our nation to be a nation under God.

According to Planned Parenthood spokesperson Chloe Cooney, clinics in at least 11 states have reported two dozen or more “hoax visits” over the past several weeks, in which a woman walks into a clinic, claims to be pregnant and asks a particular pattern of provocative questions about sex-selective abortions, such as how soon she can find out the gender of the fetus, by what means and whether she can schedule an abortion if she’s having a girl.

While patient privacy laws prohibit Planned Parenthood from offering specific details about the visits and where they occurred, Cooney told The Huffington Post that the incidents are so unusual and so similar to each other that they have raised concerns among the organization’s executives that the visits are being recorded as part of a concerted anti-Planned Parenthood campaign.

“For years opponents of reproductive health and Planned Parenthood have engaged in secret videotaping tactics with fictitious patient scenarios and selective editing in an attempt to promote misinformation about Planned Parenthood and our services,” Cooney said. “As with the prior instances, we anticipate that once again this group, likely in coordination with a broad range of anti-abortion leaders, will soon launch a propaganda campaign with the goal of discrediting Planned Parenthood, and, ultimately, restricting women’s health.”

The most likely group behind the campaign, Planned Parenthood suspects, is anti-abortion activist group Live Action, which has a history of paying actors to walk into Planned Parenthood clinics and act out various controversial scenarios in an attempt to catch the family planning provider’s staffers doing something illegal or immoral on tape. A recent operation involved actors posing as pimps and prostitutes engaged in human trafficking and seeking birth control, STD testing and other family planning services. HuffPost’s Ryan Grim reported in February 2011 that Live Action heavily edited the videos they gathered to alter the meaning of conversations and falsely imply that Planned Parenthood is complicit in sex trafficking, but conservative lawmakers and media outlets cited the group’s videos in numerous subsequent political attacks against the family planning provider.

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Frank says:

Yes, Ladies and gentleman, even in this agricultural enviroment, We're gonna' play a love song -- This was about 1974 in Harrisburg Pa. at the Farm Show Arena, a week after the Farm show had left town... Frank never admitted to playing there, and I can't say as I blame him. But, I will never forget what a magical night that was.